A Danish citizen, born in Bra, Italy, on 31 May 1945, Francesco Gullino has long been considered to be the prime suspect in the murder of Georgi Markov in September 1978.

Gullino allegedly also was used as a Bulgarian espionage agent in Denmark. In February 1993, based on information from Bulgarian authorities, the Danish National Commissar, Department G (PET) charged Gullino with “violation of section 107 of the Danish Criminal Code, alternatively section 108 of the same Code.”

Section 107 read,

Any person who, being in the service of any foreign power or organization or for the use of persons engaged in such service, inquires into or gives information on matters which, having regard to Danish state or public interests, should be kept secret, shall, whether or not the information is correct, be guilty of espionage and liable to imprisonment for any term not exceeding 16 years.

On 5 February 1993, Danish police, two Scotland Yard detectives investigating the murder of Georgi Markov, and one Bulgarian investigator, interrogated Gullino for at least six hours. He was fingerprinted and released from custody without admitting culpability for either espionage or for his involvement in the murder of Georgi Markov.

As part of the celebrations to commemorate the 750th anniversary of Berlin, on the 12th June 1987 U.S. President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech in front of some 45,000 people that would become a fundamentally iconic part of the history of the Berlin Wall - almost as iconic as the Brandenburg Gate in front of which it was delivered. In it, Reagan challenged the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to tear down the Wall as part of his ongoinging policies of glasnost and perestroika.

On the 26th June 1963, John F Kennedy made one of the most important speeches of the Cold War - perhaps one of the most famous speeches of history. A 120,000 strong crowd of Berliners gathered in front of the Schoneberg Rathaus to hear Kennedy deliver what was to be a huge boost for West German morale following the recent building of the Berlin Wall. It also communicated to the Soviet Union that the Allies would not be driven out of West Berlin. Read more to see the full text of the speech, and to hear an mp3 recording of this turning point in the Cold War. We've also managed to find some images of the cue cards JFK used whilst delivering his iconic address.

Aged 17 and on an exchange visit to Hamburg prior to returning to school for my A Level year, I was awoken early on Sunday 13th August 1961 by Herr Kansdorf, the father of my exchange partner Gerhardt, stating incredulously time and time again, “Berlin abgesperrt, Berlin abgesperrt….” (Berlin barricaded). He had been listening to his local radio station which conveyed the news that in the preceding night, East German frontier guards, in an attempt to stem the flow of would-be migrants to the West had erected barbed wire and concrete barricades. My thoughts went immediately to another family I had met two years previously in another part of Germany. There I had met a member of the family from Magdeburg (formerly in the “Ostzone”), allowed briefly in to the West on compassionate grounds to visit his ailing elderly mother and who had been planning for the day when the whole family might be re-united in the West. What would happen to that family now?